House on Haunted Hill (1959)

What Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is to sci-fi, House on Haunted Hill is for fright flicks. That is, this 1959 cheese plate is the archetypal Haunted House camp ghoulishness from the heyday of Jujubes, wax lips, and horror's low-rent P.T. Barnum, producer-director William Castle. One of Castle's more atmospheric and modestly entertaining schlock-o-ramas, today it's a kitsch-cult fave of vintage late-night TV "Monster Chiller Horror Theater" connoisseurs. Castle is of course remembered for his gimmicky promotions such as theater seats rigged with electric shock buzzers for The Tingler, 13 Ghosts' Illusion-O, Mr. Sardonicus' Punishment Poll, and Homicidal's Fright Break. House on Haunted Hill had Emergo  when in the film a vengeful skeleton rose from the vat of bubbling acid, specially equipped theaters reeled out a plastic skeleton that "floated" above the audience on a wire (whereupon the fright-tastic apparition became a popular target for Milk Duds and pea-shooters). As Stephen King recalls in his nonfiction book Danse Macabre, Castle also ornamented the movie's PR by warning ticket-buyers that they must have their blood pressure checked before daring to enter the theater.

On DVD we don't get Emergo, and the fully engrossed viewer might be better off gauging his blood alcohol level, but we do get Vincent Price as the sinister millionaire offering to pay five strangers $10,000 (say it with a Dr. Evil pinky near your lips) each if they can survive being locked overnight in his ghost-infested mansion. Price gifts them with little coffins, inside which are loaded revolvers. Then like carnival-goers stumbling through a boo!-rific spookhouse, they're beset by squeaking doors, eerie specters, a ceiling that drips blood (about which we're told, "a young girl was killed here, and whatever got her wasn't human"), one falling chandelier, severed heads, a ghost-witch in the cellar (a fine jolt), an organ playing itself, a monster hand grasping the hysterical ingénue's shoulder, a walking skeleton, and other proto-Scooby-Doo tropes.

Will the guests gun each other dead in a lethal epidemic of the willies? Why do Price's acid-tongued millionaire and his scheming trophy wife, Carol Ohmart, hate each other so? ("Remember the fun we had when you poisoned me?") And how does soused, pop-eyed Elisha Cook Jr. straight-face lines like "These guns are no good against the dead, only the living" before ending the film by intoning, "They're coming for me now  [looks out through the screen at us]  and then they'll come for you!"? As if we need more evidence that no one considered this more than just a silly seat-filling goof even in '59, notice that in the closing credits "Skeleton" is played by "Himself."

Vincent Price's portrait hangs at the entrance to the museum of charming villainy, and here he serves up the meticulously spiced ham we love him for. Before his 1960s Poeperiod and '70s Phibesphase, his tongue is already lodged in cheek and his eyebrow is arched just so when his giant floating head opens the movie by inviting the audience to a party of "food and drink...and ghosts." Price is always a treat, and here he makes an otherwise plodding movie with an EC Comics surprise-ending script worthwhile, which is more than can be said about the 1999 remake. (The titular house's exterior, by the way, is L.A.'s Ennis-Brown House, a Frank Lloyd Wright concrete block behemoth that continued to earn its SAG card in Blade Runner, The Rocketeer, Rush Hour, TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and other productions.)

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Legend Films (www.legendfilms.net) is "a studio specializing in restoring and colorizing classic films," touting a "proprietary new technology" that "allows us to color films in high definition at a never-before-seen vibrancy." Their edition of House on Haunted Hill makes the fifth DVD release, at least, for this public-domain favorite. This time the fun animated menus give us both the restored black-and-white original plus a new colorized version of the film. The colorized version is the main attraction, with the original b&w version demoted to the Special Features menu without a scene-select option. For purists, the original version looks super. The restoration has yielded a spotless print with a flawless transfer. It's a sharp, pristine image with solid blacks and graytones. As for the colorized version (this film's first color release), it's okay. The newly added color is harmless enough. That "never-before-seen vibrancy" can be a bit much, but the hues and tones are more agreeably muted than what we find in Legend's other simultaneous colorizationreleases. We stubborn traditionalists find it hard to see much value in even good work put into the process, so we can thank Legend for their fine restoration of the b&w original while giving us the choice of options. The previous Warner edition delivered the film in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, and this edition removes the "black bars" for an open-matte full-screen image (not pan-and-scan).

The DD 2.0 monaural audio is cleaned-up and hardy.

The big extra here is the audio commentary by Mystery Science Theater 3000's Mike Nelson. He gives the film a snarky but often quite funny MST3K-style spitballing, so his followers who miss his days with Tom Servo should be as pleased as the film's completist fans.

The amusing original theatrical trailer is on hand as well, along with a scored montage of the original press book in all its over-the-top splendor. Its suggestions for theater owners include: "Park an ambulance in front of your theater," "Have a uniformed nurse in lobby to distribute 'tranquilizer' pills," "Loan a coffin to spot in your lobby or next to your box office; in the coffin, place a real skeleton."

A collection of trailers from other Legend Films releases and a three-minute colorization demo (really just a promo for other Legend-colorized films) bring up the rear.

The keep-case's new squaresville cover design misses the point by replacing the original comic-booky poster art.